1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the intersection of mobile and the physical world, and specifically, to the use of mobile communication devices to facilitate improved consumer experiences in retail environments.
2. Background
Determining the presence of a person or device in a store or other location is a valuable capability. For example, retailers value foot traffic highly, because every person who walks into a store may potentially buy something at the store. Building on the foundation of such a capability, rewards can be offered to incent consumers to go to stores or other locations.
Knowledge of the presence of a person at a location can also be used to infer information about that person, such as what their interests are, what advertisements or other content they might be interested in seeing, etc.
Current technologies do not provide for reliable detection of presence, and/or require proactive user actions to detect presence.
Therefore, it would be useful to have better ways to detect presence.